找到一个你信任的医生有多难?

当你患有溃疡性结肠炎时，早期治疗是关键，但乔治亚州粉泉市的金伯利·胡克斯(Kimberly Hooks)花了数年时间遵循一个并不奏效的治疗方案。当她找到一个了解情况的胃肠病学家时，她的结肠几乎破裂了。“我记得他让我直接去急诊室。作为一个病人，我就是不明白:你说我的结肠要破裂是什么意思?在过去的10年里，我一直忠实地去看医生，”胡克斯回忆道，她现在是克罗恩氏病和慢性疾病组织的形象大使。“我现在知道，他们只是给事情贴上了一个创可贴。”

是的，我知道我是病人，我知道医生是来帮助我的，但没有人比我更了解我的身体。在我被诊断为溃疡性结肠炎后，医生告诉我要服用一种特殊的药物，我就服用了这种药物，我的症状确实有所缓解。但也许几个月后，我仍然会感到胃疼或痉挛。我会回到医生那里说，嘿，你知道，我还是觉得这里有问题。说实话，同样的事情发生了很多年，我被开了一种特殊的药片，然后回到我的医生那里，因为我的照明弹，你知道，仍然很活跃，我现在知道这只是在我的照明弹上贴了一个创可贴。我吃的药肯定更适合患有轻度溃疡性结肠炎的人。随着时间的推移，我的症状从轻微到中等到严重。但是，我基本上还是用了差不多十年的同样的药物。即使告诉了我的医生，我还是开始看到大便里有血。你知道，我看到了粘液。 The cramps won’t go away. I’m experiencing bloating. I switched jobs. And basically when I did this, I had to find a new health care provider. I knew this time around that I had to do my due diligence to find the best GI doctor that I could to start out with. And when I finally found my GI doctor, he set me up with a colonoscopy. I just remember waking up and him telling me to go straight to the emergency room because my colon was about to rupture. As a patient, I just could not understand, like, What do you mean my colon is about to rupture? I’ve been receiving treatment for the past ten years. Going faithfully to a doctor. I now know that they were just kind of putting a Band-Aid on things, and it kind of got to a point where I felt like, you know what, this is my body and I need to take control of my body. Yes, I know. I’m the patient and I know the doctors are here to help me, but no one knows my body better than I know my body. So that is the mindset that I went into when I went to find a new GI doctor. I wanted to find someone that no question was a stupid question. I definitely did not settle when it came to finding my new GI doctor. And when I did, he was very welcoming, answered all my questions, did multiple tests. If I even did my own research, I would kind of bring it back to him and if he thought it was a good idea, we kind of went with it. So it was more of a partnership versus someone seeing me for 10 minutes and sending me on my way. Him remembering me - I felt good, you know, that he was really in tune and wanted the best for me as I wanted for myself.